Jan 25, 2021Chapel_Hill_KrystalB rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
Listening to this novel was a bumpy ride for me. Loved it, hated it. Loved it, hated it. Firstly, yes- it is beautifully written, well planned, exquisitely layered (heartbreaking and infuriating stories within stories), deserving of the…
Nov 16, 2020m0mmyl00 rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
A blended family — a man plus his 10-year-old son and woman plus her 5-year-old daughter — set out on a cross-country road trip: he, to record the sounds of “Apacheria,” the Apache Indians’ historical land, and she to record the sounds of…
Oct 16, 2020uncommonreader rated this title 1.5 out of 5 stars
In this mishmash of a novel, it is as if the author could not decide what she was doing. Is this auto fiction? A post-modern exercise? Why did she change the narrator to an unconvincing child? Why place such emphasis on her marriage…
Sep 07, 2020StoriedLife rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
After an extremely promising start, Luiselli surrenders all her hard work to an unconvincing 10-year-old narrator and relies on the interjection of chapters of a fictional other work to present a nightmarish vision of the dilemma of border…
Apr 09, 2020CALS_Lee rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
Modernist fiction and political activism have been brought together to produce Lost Children Archive. Luiselli is the daughter of a Mexican ambassador. When the southern border crisis grew around 2014 or so, Luiselli admirably volunteered…
I don't know what to say but perhaps the times we live in have allowed us to expect this sorry mess to be described as a novel. I'll carry on trying but it seems to be painting by numbers mixed with some bizarre notion of profundity. I…
Dec 30, 2019njon38 rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
Inspired by the experiences of desperate children crossing the desert to get to US and the history of the Apache warriors making their last stand, framed by a fictionalized version of a road trip this Mexican born writer took from New…
Top 10 Books of 2019 New York Times
The Mexican author’s third novel — her first to be written in English — unfolds against a backdrop of crisis: of children crossing borders, facing death, being detained, being deported unaccompanied by…
Nov 04, 2019EljayJohnson rated this title 1.5 out of 5 stars
A misguided mess. I only rated it this high because there were some moments of insight and clarity amidst the folly.
A timely book about migration - told through the story of a disintegrating family on a long road trip from NYC to…
Sep 07, 2019readmorebooks rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
I'll admit that at first I did not think I would like the book. No one has a name. The mother just calls her children the boy and the girl. Even her husband is just the husband. But somehow it pulled me in and I am very glad I stayed with…
Aug 26, 2019lukasevansherman rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
This 2019 novel is very much a novel of the moment. I'd say everyone should sent a copy to the White House, but I don't think anyone there reads novels. The Mexican-born Luiselli also wrote the non-fiction book "Tell Me How It…
Jun 20, 2019mclarjh rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
Very good writing; easy to read; multiple stories about life and loss.
j
jr3083
May 22, 2019jr3083 rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
This is a very clever, self-aware book that echoes influences as diverse as Virginia Woolf, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and David Bowie’ Space Oddity. There is a long, twenty-page sentence near the end of the…
Comments (20)
Lost Children Archive